


Perfect

by Umbralpilot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adam (mentioned) - Freeform, Chronic Illness, Gen, Keith (mentioned) - Freeform, M/M, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, Shiro is not a cinnamon roll, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 18:15:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15418758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbralpilot/pseuds/Umbralpilot
Summary: Shiro the Hero, running out of time.





	Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> The thing is I don't like Shiro, he's too annoyingly perfect. 
> 
> This is a fic about how that is not necessarily a good thing.

At the time it’s a bit of a pain in the ass, what with them having an actual war to win. But later, when he’s trying to take a break – at least, to figure out whether they all need to take a break, if it’s just him who needs to think _at this rate how much longer_ – he loads up some of the videos and watches them over again. _Shiro the Hero_ , he listens to Coran announce to the universe. _Shiro the Hero_.

The universe explodes in applause every time. It really does believe in him.

This probably isn’t the healthiest break he could be taking. He shuts the video down and goes off to get some training done. Maybe that doesn’t count as a break at all, but it’s something he knows how to do. He’s fast. He’s strong. The robots don’t last seconds against him, even when he’s winded and putting aside his Bayard for some hand to hand. The Galra arm works amazingly, as if his form wasn’t perfect already, the universe has given him this edge, too. It used to be he secretly worried about their chances, about how possible it really was to defeat a ten-thousand-years empire with a bunch of kids and the alien weapons they really have only a marginal understanding of. He doesn’t think that anymore. Some if it’s the kids. Keith. Some is the Black Lion. But mostly it’s that he has no time to waste on impostor syndrome. He just has no time.

His human arm twinges. He ducks under an oncoming blow, cracks a sweeping kick against the bot’s shins and plunges the Galra hand into its chest cavity. He grabs the flesh hand with the metal.

Is this it? How much time? How much longer? They said he has a few years. To be fast, strong. To break every record. To _win_.

He ends the simulation with a weary breath and sinks down, legs stretched out before him, tingling flesh arm in his lap. The Galra arm is steady as he leans back on it. He thinks about winning. Shouldn’t be possible, but God knows, the stars know, that’s never stopped him before. It’s what he _does_ , Shiro the Hero, every record broken, perfect form. And anyway, he owes it to them. The kids. Keith.

The people they left back on Earth, he owes it to them. He needs to _show_ them.

It’d be easier if Keith were there, he thinks. Keith gets it even if he doesn’t know the details, about that kind of winning. Though it’s better that Keith doesn’t know. Keith doesn’t need to know. He only needs to know that Shiro survives, Shiro comes back, Shiro wins. He’ll have plenty of time to learn, after.

After there’ll probably be parades. He tilts his head back and smiles for a little while, drenched in sweat, breathless on the floor, he smiles at the thought of after. Maybe Lance will have his statue. He doesn’t think Keith is going to care about that, but maybe that’s another thing Keith needs to learn, along with how to be a leader, breaking records, perfect form, _winning_ – though who knows. Keith gets it, about proving yourself. The way most people don’t. The way Adam didn’t.  

Adam, who wanted to grow old with him. His flesh arm clenches violently. He braces himself on his Galra arm, pushes himself back up. Wipes the white hair out of his eyes, starts the simulation again.

Adam, who wanted to grow old with him. He whirls a kick at the first bot, snaps his forward fist out to the side of its head. He doesn’t have time for that, between the broken records and the war to win. Grab the bot’s head and smash it down on his knee, plunge the Galra hand through its neck, kneel behind it as it drops to grab his Bayard. Adam would have held his hand when it shook, lovingly helped him out of bed in the morning, taken him out now and then, in the chair with the drip, to talk to Garrison kids about his glory days. Shiro the Hero. The blade across two robot bodies in a fluent X, sparks, ozone, the tingle in his human hand. Lance might have his statue. Statues stay solid, straight, skyward. Maybe the kids would wheel him around instead when they’re grown, take him to museums and monuments to wheeze and waffle about how he had won the war. Or they might just remember him passing out just as the radiation belt was overhead, dragged up by Pidge like a lump of meat, got to tell Keith to stop rescuing him, he wants to go on his own feet, he wants to –

The simulation blazes alarm. He blinks at the long cut the bot’s blade has scored across his chest even as he was taking it down. It’s shallow, but it’s set off the program, count on his score. Not perfect.

 _Take a break_ , something in his mind says. _You’re meant to be taking a break. It doesn’t matter. After all, you already know, it’s only downhill from here._

But he closes his eyes, and hears Coran’s voice, and the applause. _Shiro the Hero, who broke every record while the universe was breaking him_ …

It’s a tragedy, but it’s something. It’s _his_. He holds it close, and restarts the simulation.


End file.
